Not Quite Romeo
by Ryooshi
Summary: ShikaSaku. First thing I've posted in years. Sometimes even our exhaulted genious Shikamaru just needs to open his eyes.
1. Default Chapter

Seems I keep forgetting these Disclaimers. So here's the obvious. I don't own them. And I'm trying not to have them out of character. Please tell me if they are.

He hadn't really taken notice of her before . He knew who she was. She was around him a lot. She was just a loudmouthed Sasuke fangirl, ever fighting with her best friend and his teammate Ino, who was another loudmouthed Sasuke fangirl. Causing noise and damage and just so much damn _trouble_. Something he wanted no part of. So he _had_ seen her around a lot. He had just never _seen_ her.

So suffice it to say that when he stumbled across her stretched out in his favorite cloud watching spot watching the clouds, with her pink hair splayed out across the grass, he still hadn't really seen her. And when she smiled up at him and asked if he wanted to join her as though it was the most natural thing in the world, he grunted and stretched out next to her. That may have been the first crack of sunlight between tightly closed lids.

They had lain in a comfortable silence until Sakura decided she wanted to strike up conversation. Rolling to her side and propping her head up on her hand, she regarded the Genius jounin with a smile.

'So what brings you out here today?'

He furrowed his brow in frustration and that was the only response she got for several long moments. 'Harrumphing', she returned to laying on her back, mumbling a barely heard 'Never mind'. It was another few minutes still before he answered.

'I'm always here. This is my spot. You just happen to be in it today.'

She turned her head and glared at him. 'Well, I'm sorry to have disturbed your peace and quiet.'

He snorted. 'No, you're not. You shouldn't lie. If you were sorry, you would have left.'

'Do you want me to leave?'

'I don't care what you do either way. I'm very skilled at ignoring loud demanding Kunoichi.'

She smirked at this. 'You're so lazy you wont even send me away.'

She turned her head back to the sky, watching the slow pilgrimage the clouds made across the sky.

It was at least another ten minutes before the silence was broken. 'Why are you here?'

'Why do you care?'

'Well, you're in my space, so I'd like to know why. Besides, the Uchiha is training right now. Shouldn't you be off cheering for him?'

'Oh, please. I got over that. Besides. I just wanted quiet. There's none of that anywhere in a 10 yard radius of Sasuke-kun.'

He snorted at this. 'There certainly isn't. But you're just as bad.'

Sakura turned her head to him at this, frowning. 'I was. I'm not anymore. I doubt you'd ever notice though. Not with your head in the clouds. Sasuke-kun is not my Romeo-'

He cut her off here, his sudden bark of laughter startling her into silence. She sat up quickly, feeling indignant. Shikamaru followed her action, trying to control his laughter. 'Don't tell me you're one of those girls that believe in that Romeo and Juliette bullshit? I knew you were bad, but I didn't think you were that bad.'

'What's wrong with a girl wanting to find her Romeo? Don't you want to find your destined? Or have you already found her in Ino-pig? Perhapse Choji-san?'

He leaned towards her, sneering. 'What's so great about finding to die for that's willing to die for you? Hm? Don't we risk our lives every day on missions? Or even in training? I don't see how a person would be much different.'

She sighed, shoulders slumping. 'How can you be so smart, and miss the point so entirely? It's not about dying for someone. It's about finding someone worth dying for. When you find someone that you love so much, and you cant imagine life without, you gladly put your life down for them. Hopefully, they are willing to do the same. And then you have this connection that says you're going to be together for eternity, and you're going to do everything in your power to make sure that that eternity lasts as long as possible.'

Shikamaru snorted at this. 'That sounds ridiculous. It's much too troublesome.'

'Okay, look at it this way. Strip all the romance from it and take away everything that makes it worthwhile. Try from a purely strategic point of view. When you have this kind of a connection, you are more likely to fight harder, since it's not only your own life on the line. The chances for mission success is heightened because there are two or more people who are fighting two or three times harder than they would have before.'

She paused, and sighed. 'Never mind. Forget I said anything. I was never here. I'm going to go and train.' Rising from the grass, Sakura casually walked away.

And maybe, this was when he really stared to _see._

Afterwards, things had changed between them. Sakura continued to visit his spot, sometimes she'd be there first, and he would sigh exasperatedly before stretching out on the ground beside her; and sometimes she'd run up after he arrived and she would fall like a rag doll beside him.

They didn't talk much though. She would occasionally mention things going on in her life, and he would ignore her completely. Sakura had never before been put off by people who wouldn't respond to her, and she was comforted by the fact that he hadn't actually stopped coming to his spot.

Shikamaru, however was not unfazed. She talked too much, spent too much time on her appearance, and seemed to be taking over his cloud watching spot. He also found that he liked the way her eyes lit up when she was talking about her last outing with Ino, or the way she gestured when recounting her teammate Naruto's latest folly. And he loved the way that when she hit a funny part of a story, her entire face was animated by her laughter, her pink hair swayed with the movement of her body, and every once in a while she would reach over and lightly slap his shoulder as if to make sure he was still listening.

And he would just watch her.

A few weeks later, Sakura hadn't shown up for a few days. The first day, he wasn't surprised, neither of them were there every day. The second day, he found himself looking across the field where she would come from, instead of at the clouds. And the third day, he knew something was up. He had been expecting her, as Naruto had done something particularly stupid that had resulted in three buildings being leveled, and he _knew_ that she was going to want to vent about it.

But she hadn't come.

He'd waited, and cloud watched, and waited some more.

And he refused to think that maybe he'd missed her these last few days.

Until finally it was time to meet his teammates for a scheduled training match.

He'd shown up at the proper place, at the proper time, and there was Choji. No Ino and no Asuma. Then Shikamaru, with his huge IQ, found the piece of evidence that told him beyond a shadow of a doubt that something was wrong. Choji was sitting there, staring at the ground, not eating.

'Hey, where's Asuma?'

Choji looked up, startled. 'They're not coming.'

'No? Any reason why?'

A variety of emotions passed over Choji's face, as though he wasn't too impressed about the way things were going but knew that there was nothing that he could do. 'Asuma's giving a hand to Kakashi. Ino's at home freaking. You know that pink haired girl? Ino's friend? Yeah, she disappeared. Turns out a mission was a lot worse than they thought it was. Kakashi's gone after her, since that's what teachers do. Asuma's gone to help, since that's what friends do. And I…' Choji rose from the bench, 'am going home for dinner. You coming over?'

'No, I think I should get home too.'

'Alright.' He turned and started walking away, throwing over his shoulder: 'Keep an ear out. You're the best strategist here, and they don't know how dangerous this mission is. You might get roped into it.'


	2. Chapter 2

This is the second chapter. No, it's not beta'd, I don't have a beta reader. Sorry. But thanks for all the lovely reviews. Especially to pweh pweh. I've always considered stabbing myself and dying to be a rather interesting way to die. And no, I'm not being serious.

And Drackial, I never really thought of her taking over like that, lol, but I don't know if it's so much coexisting as it is him just not wanting to move. Although they are the same thing…

Sorry the chapter is so short. I wanted to get something up to show you I haven't gotten bored of it.

Ten minutes found him in the doorway of the Hokage's office, demanding the mission. Thirty minutes found him leaving the village with his four man team to search for Sakura's last know whereabouts. Soon after leaving, one member moved to run next to him.

'Nara-sama, I am Suchi. Lord Hokage asked me to brief you on the way. Haruna-san and her team last checked in about 3 hours from here. They were closing in, but were not able to give all the information.'

'What were they after? What was the point of the mission?'

'It was only supposed to be a simple mission. One of the nearby villages was complaining about bandits, so they hired us to deal with them. Haruna-san was simply going to find out where the bandits were hiding, and then see what they could do or if they needed backup. It wasn't supposed to take more than a day. Then we lost contact.'

'How long since last contact?'

'Almost 23 hours.'

Shikamaru cursed to himself, touching off a branch with more energy then he thought he had. It was bad, and he knew it.

I just hope we're not too late… 

'Nara-sama! This is the place of their last transmission.'

The team stopped suddenly in a small clearing. There were no outward signs that anyone had been there previously, but Shikamaru knew better than to look for that. Sakura was too good of a ninja to leave obvious signs during a mission. He sent his men to pan out around the clearing and find the signs she would have left intentionally.

Ten minutes of fruitless searching made Shikamaru uneasy. _We can't waste any more time. We may already be too late. Damnit, Sakura! Which direction!_

A sudden shout from across the clearing had him running. A small branch, broken in just the right way, a rock unsettled pointed them on the right path. And in an instant they were running again.

It was not more than ten yards before they heard the sounds of camp, and in an instant they were concealed, watching.

_A small camp. How could she have fallen to this? There can't be more than a hundred people here. And they're not ninja's, just ruffians. This doesn't make sense._

The pointed tips of tents spread out over a full acre, hidden only by the tall spruce that surrounded them. Camp fires collected in the center circle, and a few cooking fires closer the what were obviously the sleeping tents. Fenced in horses and posted training dummies surrounded the camp. There were people milling about, Some eating, some mock batteling. Only a few seemed to be on watch duty. It was much too rudimentary. Shikamaru had no doubt that they could get in and out without being noticed.

Suchi came to his side again. 'I can tell the difference in the sleeping tents and working tents, but which tent are they keeping our ninja's in?'

Shikamaru smirked at this. 'Rather genius, isn't it? We have no idea which tent is used for what. This won't be as easy as I thought. We have to look in every tent. But they're not as well trained as we are.' Turning to his team 'Okay. We're splitting up. Everyone has their communicators on. One stays here just in case. Suchi, you're going to go around to the left. You' he pointed to one brown haired ninja 'will go to the right. I will go center. You say here and watch, if we get caught, you can tell Hokage where we are. Be careful, and don't underestimate them, they've already got a few of us, assuming Kakashi and Asuma are in there too.'

Three quick nods and everyone disappeared.

Navigating around the people was easy. The people of this village of tents had no ninja training and thus were completely oblivious to his movements. Tent after tent turned up nothing. A few sparse pieces of furniture were all that made up the first ten. Shikamaru was getting dangerously close to the center of the camp, and there were increasingly more people milling about. He knew that he would have to find the tent fast. Rounding another corner, this tent yielded a group, standing around a table covered in maps. Interesting, but not what he was here for. He was about to pull away when he felt the all too familiar point of a kunai. Turning slowly, he cursed inwardly when his eyes fell on the tell tale zig zag of the Hidden Grass village. The grass nin smirked over Shikamaru before he felt the blow to his head and everything went black.


End file.
